


My Neighbor Nymeria

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Tonari no Totoro | My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Jon tho!, Jon/Sansa in that adorable kidcrush way, None of the Stark Bros unfortunately, Plot lovingly stolen from Studio Ghibli's "My Neighbor Totoro", Too Miyazaki to fit them in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 07:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1156995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something living in the trees behind their house.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Neighbor Nymeria

**Author's Note:**

> Written in large part for tumblr user [knightjaime](knightjaime.tumblr.com), who shares my Totoro and Stark Sisters feels.

Sansa feeds her caramel as they sit under the desk in the bed of the truck.  It’s sticky in her mouth, and sweet too.  She likes the taste of it.

The truck jolts underneath them, and the bumpy road makes Arya’s butt hurt.  She feels Dad changing the gears and slowing the truck down and she knows that they’re almost there.

“Hey!” they hear Dad call, and Arya stands up and pokes her head just over the ridge of the truck.  “Do you know how to get to Winterfell from here?”  The boy standing by the side of the road widens his eyes, then points.  “Thanks!” Dad calls.  The boy doesn’t say anything, but as they drive back past he turns around and sprints away.

*

“Here we are then.”  Sansa tugs herself through the opening between the desk and one of Dad’s chairs, wriggling free and landing on the thick green grass. 

“Hey, wait for me!” she hears Arya call out, and she turns around to pull her little sister from the truck as well.  When Arya is safely on the ground, Sansa runs off towards the porch of the house, turning a cartwheel as she does.  _Home!_ she thinks wildly.  _This is home!_

Behind her, Arya tries to turn a cartwheel too, but she can’t quite manage on her short little legs.  Sansa swings herself around one of the wooden posts of the porch and begins to make her way back towards her sister, but stops when the wood under her hand creaks.

The creak makes Arya stop too.  Her eyes widen.  “It’s breaking,” she breathes.

“It’s just old,” said Sansa, pushing on the post.  It creaks again.  Arya bursts out laughing and runs towards the post, pushing it with as much strength as she can manage.

“Girls, don’t break the house!” Dad calls.

“We won’t!” Sansa and Arya yell back together.  They look at each other, giggling.

*

The tree in the backyard is almost as big as the forests they passed in the truck.  It has red leaves though, and is white like Arya’s teeth after she brushes them. 

Arya stares at it with wide eyes, wondering how anything can be so big, and wondering if anything in the world can even be close to the same size.

Sansa bends down next to her. 

“What’s that?” she demands.   Sansa holds up a small nugget. 

“I think it’s an acorn,” Sansa says. 

“An acorn?” Arya asks.  “I want one!”

“There’s one, look!” Sansa points.  Arya throws herself on the ground and picks it up.  It’s cool and hard in her hand.  She decides she will keep it.

*

The housekeeper stops by in the afternoon and Arya is afraid of her.  She’s old.  Very old.  There are wrinkles on her face and huge mole on her forehead and Arya hides behind Sansa’s legs.  She’s not scared of strangers.

She’s scared of old people.

She always has been.  Her mother tried to tell her to stop, that it’s rude.  Sansa’s perfectly polite with the old woman.  (Nan, she said her name was.  Nan.)  Sansa’s not afraid of anyone. 

She supposes that so long as Sansa’s not afraid, she shouldn’t be either.

*

Sansa is helping Nan unpack the plates, peeling away newsprint, flattening it, and putting it back in the boxes once the plates are on the shelf.  A movement outside catches her eye.

She looks over and sees a boy about her own age, holding a basket.  She cocks her head at him. 

“Hello,” she calls.  He stiffens, then shouts back,

“Is Nan there?  My mom wanted me to drop this off with her.”  He waves the basket slightly

“She’s in the other room.  Come on in!”

He shakes his head vigorously, then changes his mind and hurries to the window.  He deposits the basket on the sill, then sprints away.

“What’s wrong?” Sansa demands.

 “Your house is haunted!”

Sansa would have protested, but he is already gone.  Their house isn’t haunted.  He is stupid.

*

 

Everything is so dark outside.  There is no constant incandescent glow of the Tokyo streetlamps, no subtle thrum of engines.  Just the creaking house and the creaking trees in and the wind.

Sansa doesn’t let herself be scared when she goes to collect the firewood.  It’s silly to be scared.  And besides, the boy was wrong.  The house isn’t haunted.  Their house is just old.

A gust of wind knocks her over and blows the kindling from her hands.  The twigs fly through the air, circling higher and higher until they are lost in the white and red of the weirwood branches.

She gets up and sprints inside.

*

“What’s that?” Arya tries not to squeak.  She’s not a fraidycat like Sansa says sometimes.  Arya’s not afraid of anything.  But the storm is so loud and the thunder seems as though it could break the house, even if that’s not possible.  It’s not possible.  Is it?

“Just the storm,” Dad says, scrubbing her back.  “We’ve had storms before.  Remember three weeks ago?”

That storm hadn’t been scary in their tiny apartment though.  She’d pressed her face up against the glass and stared down at the brightly colored umbrellas in the street hundreds of thousands of feet below.

The wind whistles through a crack in the window and Arya bites her lip to keep quiet.

Then Dad starts laughing.  He laughs very loudly, grabbing at his belly.

“What’s so funny?” Arya demands, but Dad just keeps on laughing.  “Daddy!” she splashes him with water and his white shirt gets a little see-through.  She splashes him again.

“You have to laugh,” he said, still chuckling.  “Laughter scares storms away.  Everyone knows that.”

He begins laughing again, and this time, Arya joins him.  Their laughter rings through the bathroom walls, and soon enough she can’t hear the wind at all.

*

There’s no school that Monday, and they scramble into the bed of the truck.  Sansa keeps one hand on Arya’s shoulder to keep her from falling if the road bumps too much.

They pass the boy who had brought the basket.  He’s working in a field with Nan, and he sticks his tongue out at Sansa as they drive back.  Sansa sticks her tongue out back at him, and Arya does too, for good measure, though she doesn’t know why.  Nan swats him with a hoe.  “Jon! Don’t be rude!”

They drive through rice paddies and fields of corn, over twisting country roads.  The sky is blue, like the day they moved out of Tokyo, and the world is green and lovely and healthy. 

*

“Mama!  Mama!”  Arya breaks into a run and she passes the other beds in the room and throws herself at her mother. 

Mama is beautiful.  Arya has always thought so, and her arms are always warm when they wrap around her.  “When did you get so big!” Mama exclaims.  “Ned, you didn’t tell me that the girls had gotten to be so big.”

“Slipped my mind,” said Dad, and Arya feels the bed sink as he and Sansa sit next to Mama as well. 

Mama pulls her up so that she can look at her in her face, then presses a kiss to the tip of her nose.  “How do you like the new house, Arya?”

“I love it!” Arya squeals.  “It’s big and they say that it’s haunted!”

“Who says that it’s haunted?” Dad asks.

“The boy.”

“What boy?”

“Nan’s grandson,” Sansa supplies.  Arya nods.  She doesn’t know if it’s right, but it sounds right.

“Well, we’ll just have to get the ghosts out of it, won’t we?” Mama says, her thumb rubbing down Arya’s cheek.

“When are you coming home?” Arya demands.  She wants to see Mama all the time.  And they’re closer now, too.  Dad said they were moving so they could be near the hospital, even though now he had to leave for work even more early than he used to, and even though he sometimes didn’t get home until after dark.

“Soon.  The Doctors say I can come visit in a few weekends.”

Arya squeals in excitement.

*

Mama said that Sansa’s hair was just like hers, and Sansa glows.  She has only ever wanted to be like Mama.

*

Mama said that when she came to visit, she would sleep in Arya’s bed because she was scared of the ghosts.  Arya won’t let Mama be scared.  She’ll teach her Dad’s trick with the laughing.  That should help.

*

One of her new classmates comes to take her to school.  Her name is Jeyne, and she chatters in Sansa’s ear the entire way to the schoolhouse.  She tells her about the teachers, about the classes, about boys, but Sansa’s mind is full of Mama and the way she said that Sansa was growing to be so beautiful. 

*

Arya stares at the clock for twenty minutes, waiting for Sansa to come home before she realizes that Sansa won’t be home for another six hours at least.  So she climbs off her chair in the kitchen grabs her hat and goes outside.

Running around in circles in the yard is less fun without Sansa.  Sansa can turn cartwheels, and she says that she will teach Arya how to when she’s bigger.  Sansa always leads the way and has ideas about where to explore.  Sansa also found the acorns when they arrived.

Arya tries a few cartwheels but can’t land properly and ends up flat on her bottom five times before she stops.  She runs around in circles around the porch, around the garden, around the trees.  She laughs at the wind.  She finds a frog in the brook and brings it to Dad who is hunched over a paper at his desk, red pen in hand.  He smiles and suggests that she put it in a bowl of water so that it doesn’t dry out, but she decides to put it back instead.

She finds an acorn next to the steps of the side door, and bends to pick it up.  When she does, she sees another one.  And another, and another, a small trail leading towards the weirwood.  She collects them all to give to Sansa when she gets home from school. 

She spies what looks like a little dog in the shadow of the tree.  When it sees her, it scampers away.  She puts the acorns in her pocket and hurries after it, climbing into a hole in the base of the trunk.  The hole is dark and cramped but Arya’s not scared, she’s _not_ , and she comes out the other side soon enough.  She’s in a hollow, with flowers and butteflies and a giant sleeping furry thing. 

It looks kind of like a giant dog, or a giant puppet.  She’s not sure which.  She knows she should be scared, but she’s not for some reason and she goes up to it.  It’s big enough to squash her if it rolls over, so she climbs into its back.  It opens its eye at her blearily, then lets out a tired, lazy roar.

Arya roars back.  She’s not afraid—she’s _not_.  It blinks yellow eyes, then closes them and goes back to sleep.

“Nymeria,” Arya says.  “You’re called Nymeria.”

*

They find her curled up in a hole in the brambles, fast asleep, her hat askew and acorns rolling out of her pockets.

“There you are!” says Sansa.  “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Arya rubs the sleep from her eyes and looks at her sister.

“Sansa!  Sansa!  I saw a creature!  Like the ones from the storybooks!  Her name is Nymeria.”

“Nymeria, huh?” says Dad, crouching down and helping Arya straighten her hat.  “Where’d she go?”

Arya looks around wildly.  “She was here.  We went to sleep together!” 

“You were alone when we found you,” Sansa says quietly.  Arya is on her feet and she tears off through the bushes.

They search for forty-five minutes, but they don’t find Nymeria.

*

“Jon, pay attention!” Mr. Cassell says, swatting Jon with a ruler.  The class laughs, and Jon blushes and looks away.

Sansa knew he was looking at her. He does that.  She ignores it—him, the laughter, the attention, and continues to practice her kanji.  Only when Jeyne pokes her and whispers, “Hey—isn’t that your sister?” does she look around.  At the gate of the schoolyard, Nan is holding Arya’s hand.

*

“She wouldn’t stop crying unless I brought her to see you,” said Nan. 

“Oh, Arya.  I’m at school,” Sansa crouches down next to her sister.  Arya continues to look resolutely at the ground.  “What’s the matter?  You were fine yesterday.”

Arya doesn’t say a word.  She knows that Sansa will roll her eyes if she says that she can’t find Nymeria again.  A tear dribbles down her face.

Sansa sighs.  “Come on.  I’ll see if you can sit in on my classes.”

*

Arya draws direwolves for the rest of the day, trying to see if she can make them both look fearsome and friendly.  Sansa’s friends say she draws well.

*

It’s cloudy when they leave the school and the first fat drops of rain happen about a mile from home.  They start running for one of the bus overhangs along the main road.  Arya trips over a rock and falls flat on her face and Sansa doubles back for her, giving her sister her hand and pulling her up.

“Come on,” Sansa says.  “It’s all right.  Let’s go.”

The rain only gets harder while they’re waiting beneath the overhang.  Sansa does her best to rub the mud off Arya’s clothing. 

Jon walks by with a black umbrella.  He pauses when he sees them.  Arya waves.  She remembers him from class.  He had made her laugh with a joke about dust bunnies.  He freezes, the way he does whenever Sansa is around.  Then he hands her his umbrella.

“I can’t take this,” she says.  He’ll get wet.  He lives farther away than we do.  He’ll be soaked when he gets home.  But he just extends his hand further.  When Sansa doesn’t take the umbrella, he drops it to the ground in front of them and begins running down the road, schoolbag over his head.

*

“We should meet Dad at the bus stop,” Sansa says when they get into the house.  “He didn’t bring his umbrella today.”

Arya has already stripped off her muddy clothes and is running up the stairs to change into cleaner ones.  She also grabs her boots and her raincoat for good measure, just in case the umbrella isn’t big enough for all of them.

*

Dad wasn’t on the first bus back from the train station.  Nor the second bus.  The rain makes the sky even darker than usual, and pretty soon it’s pitch black except for the solitary streetlamp by the bus stop.

Arya is tired, and she leans into Sansa’s leg.  When she almost falls asleep standing up, Sansa kneels down and puts her sister on her back and props the umbrella over them.

They stand like that for another half hour, completely alone.

And then, they’re not alone.

There is a huge paw in Sansa’s peripheral vision.  She stiffens.  It doesn’t move, it just stands there, whatever it is, and she tilts slightly so that her sleeping sister doesn’t notice and wake up. 

It’s a huge creature, furry and four-legged with big yellow eyes and big white teeth and soft white fur on its belly. A direwolf like Arya had drawn all day at school.

 _Nymeria_ , Sansa thinks.  Then she reaches over and hands the creature her Dad’s umbrella.  “If you want to stay dry,” she says.  The direwolf looks at her balefully, then reaches out a paw and takes the umbrella.

Its eyes widen as drops of water land in great plops on the umbrella.  Then it draws its lips back in a smile.  It jumps up, high, high into the air, and when it lands the earth shakes, water falling like a river on top of them.  Somehow, Arya still sleeps.

A bus appears, but it’s not like any bus that Sansa has ever seen.  It looks like a giant dragon, with bright red eyes and a broad smile made of teeth as sharp as knives.

Nymeria hands her back the umbrella, climbs on the bus.  The bus flaps its wings and soars away down the road, leaving Sansa and Arya completely alone.

*

Dad is on the next bus, and when it pulls up, Arya jerks awake.

“Well hello there,” he says, accepting the umbrella Sansa is handing him. “I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.  My train was delayed, so I missed the bus.”

Sansa can’t hold it in any longer.  “Dad!  Dad!  I saw Nymeria!  And a giant dragon bus!”

He grins at her as Arya says, “What?  When!  Why didn’t you wake me up?”

*

When they get home, Arya funds a packet of acorns on the bed that she and Sansa share, tied up in red paper.

They plant them in the garden the next day.  Every day for the next two weeks, she goes out to see if they have started growing yet.

She hopes they sprout before Mama comes home in a few weeks.

*

“Maybe the acorns were dead,” Dad says as he looks out the window.  Arya is crouched by the little patch where they had buried them.  “Or maybe it’s the wrong season.”

“No,” says Sansa.  “They’ll grow.” 

She doesn’t know how she knows.  She just does.

*

The wind is blowing loudly and Arya is tossing and turning.  She can’t sleep.  She wants the acorns to sprout.  Sansa said that they would, but they haven’t yet.

She can’t help but wonder if Nymeria gave them the acorns to mean something else—that they weren’t supposed to be planted. 

She rolls over again and looks out the window.  (Sansa let her have the side by the window this time.  She’s glad.  Sansa sleeps so much more easily—she doesn’t _need_ to be able to see the stars.)  Something is moving outside, and Arya scrambles off the bed to get a closer look.

It’s Nymeria, and what looks like a baby direwolf circling the patch.  It’s almost like a dance, they pause here and there and Nymeria tilts her nose up to the heavens then down to the patch.

“Sansa!” Arya hisses.

“Hng?” Sansa is not awake.  Arya runs over and pokes her very hard in the side.  “Ow!”

“Nymeria’s there!” Arya is hopping up and down with excitement. 

Sansa is out of the bed in no time and the two of them sneak past Dad’s bedroom (he’s snoring, so they know that they are safe), and run outside without even bothering to put on shoes.  The trail behind Nymeria and the direwolf pup, mimicking their motions.

Nymeria lets out a great howl and the acorns begin to sprout. 

They grow quickly, merging together, forming a tree even bigger than the weirwood.  And Nymeria is circling it, running faster than they can until it stops.  Then, she kneels down in front of her, and Arya knows, just knows that she’s supposed to climb on.

So she does, and Sansa climbs on behind her, and the wolf runs off with them, leaping into the air.

*

Sansa can see everything.  The school house, Jon’s house, Jeyne’s house, their house, the bus stop, the train station, the general store, the winding road that leads to the hospital and mother.  Along the horizon, she can even see the glowing light is Tokyo.  But that’s not what she pays attention to.   She watches the dots of light that are moving cars below, and wonders who is driving them and where they are going.

She keeps one hand firmly in Nymeria’s fur, the other wrapped around Arya’s waist.  The wind in her face is chilly and clear and clean.

*

The next morning, the huge tree is gone.  But there are sprouts in the garden.

“It wasn’t a dream!” Arya dances in joy.  It wasn’t.  It _wasn’t!_

*

They are in the garden gathering berries on Wednesday afternoon—her and Sansa and Nan.  Jon is there too, but he’s not helping them pick berries.  He’s bent over his math homework, tongue sticking out as he stares at the writing on the page.  Arya wishes she could do math.  She can read—Sansa and Dad taught her, even though she’s still slow at it.  But counting past ten is hard, and the idea of making numbers turn into one another…

“What are you staring at?” Jon asks, grabbing his paper and pulling it towards him.  Arya looks back down at the berry bushes and keeps plucking the soft, juicy things from the branches.  They are so big and fat that she _knows_ that Nymeria had circled them too to make them so tasty.

“These are such fine berries,” Nan said, popping one in her mouth. “We should use them to make your mother a pie for her visit this weekend.”

“I’ve never made a pie before,” Sansa said, “Have you?”

“Of course,” Nan replied.  “It’s not hard.  Especially not with berries as good as these.”

“We need to use my berries too,” said Arya.

“Naturally, dear.”  Nan’s face was warm and she couldn’t believe she was ever afraid of the wrinkles and the wart.  “I bet your berries will be just what your mother needs to make her healthy again.  She’ll be as good as new in no time.”

Arya knows she’s right.  She’s sure that Nymeria made the berries magical and that when Mom comes home for the weekend, she’ll get better so quickly that she won’t even need to go back to the hospital to finish her recovery.  She’ll just call the hospital and say that they should come and study the berries in her yard because they’re better at curing cancer than the stuff that made her lose all her hair.

The phone rings and Sansa gets up to answer it.  Arya keeps plucking at berries, her tongue stuck out like Jon now, focusing on getting the best ones for Mama.

“Hello, Stark residence,” she hears Sansa from far off.  “No, he’s at work.  I can take a message though.  I’m sure that—yes, I can give you his number.  Can you at least tell me…Oh.  I see.  Yes, he’s at Tokyo University in the Archaeology department.  Yes, that’s the number.  Thank you.”

“Sansa,” calls Nan.  “What’s going on?”

Sansa doesn’t reply.  She sits down at the kitchen table and waits quietly, staring at her hands.  After a few minutes, she picks up the phone again and calls.

“Hello?  Dad?  What’s going on?” she asks, and she sounds scared. 

Arya picks berries faster.

*

“She’s got a cold.  She’ll be all right, but they aren’t letting her out for the weekend,” Dad said soothingly.  “I’m heading over there after work.  Is Nan still there?”

“Yes, she’s in the garden.”

“Would you mind asking her to come to the phone?”

Sansa puts it down on the table. 

“Nan!”

*

“What do you mean, she’s not coming home?” There are tears in Arya’s eyes already.

“She’s sick, ok?   She can’t leave the hospital this weekend.”

“But she was going to come sleep in our bed!” Arya doesn’t care that she’s crying.  Doesn’t care at all.  What’s the point of picking magical berries and all the night’s she’s practiced taking up as little space as possible in the bed if Mama isn’t actually coming home?

“Well, it’ll have to wait.  She’s not well.”  It sounds like Sansa’s about to cry too, but she’s not allowed to cry when Arya is.  They have a rule about it. 

“She’s always sick.  Why is a cold going to make a difference?”

“I don’t know, it just is, ok?”

“Girls.”  Nan’s back from the kitchen.  “You’re going to come round to my house for supper, all right?  Sansa, go get your school things.  Jon, pack up.  We’re heading home.”

Jon doesn’t say a word, he just sticks his math book into his backpack.

For half a second, Arya wants to throw her berries across the yard and let Nymeria come find them and do whatever she wants with them.  Then she clutches them closer to her and pouts at the ground.

*

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Jon mutters to Sansa as they follow Nan down the hill.

Sansa looks over at him.  It’s the first time he’s said anything to her.  She tries to smile, but her lips twitch. 

Looking as though he’s not entirely sure that this is how best to act in this sort of situation, Jon reaches over and pats her gingerly on the arm.

*

None of them seem to care that Arya’s still crying and feels like she could just fall to the ground and cry and cry and cry until there’s a giant pile of mud around her face because her tears made the dirt wet. 

None of them care at all. 

They’re all paying attention to Sansa.

*

“Don’t look like that, Sansa.  I’m sure she’ll be fine.  They’re very good doctors over there.  They know what they’re doing.”

“It’s just like last time,” Sansa mumbles, watching Arya cross the yard, dragging her feet, head down.

“Last time?” Nan asks.

“She was supposed to come home a few months ago.  For a weekend.  Back when we still lived in Tokyo.  And then she got sick and they sent her to the clinic out here.  That’s why we moved.”

“I’m sure it’s different.  Your father said that it was a cold.”

“Yes, but what if the doctors were just saying that? What if it’s more than that?”

“Sansa, I’m sure that they wouldn’t lie to your father.”

And the fear tumbles into Sansa’s words, her heart racing.  “Nan, what will we do if she dies?  What if she’s dead already?”

She bursts into tears and Nan wraps an arm around her shoulder. 

*

It’s only when Sansa starts to actually cry that Arya stops her own sniffling.  When the others turn into Nan’s yard, Arya keeps walking.  And then she’s running down the road, the berries still clutched to her chest because they’re magical and will make Mama better.

*

They notice that Arya’s gone right before they get into the house and the fear that Sansa feels for her mother is eclipsed by a whole new fear.  She sprints back out to the road, but Arya’s nowhere to be found.  “Arya!” she shouts, though it feels more like a scream the way that it tears out of her throat.

Jon is behind her.  “Go back up to the house and see if she turned back,” he says.  “I’m going to see if she went into town.”

Sansa does as he says, though she knows that Arya’s not up at the house.  She spends fifteen minutes searching and crying before running back down the hill. 

On the street past Nan’s house she sees three fallen berries.

Her heart stops.

She couldn’t have…no.  It’s _miles_ away.  She’d have no way of getting there.

Sansa moves her feet faster and faster, letting them take her down the road to the hospital.

She passes Jon who calls out after her but she doesn’t stop.  She can’t stop.

*

She doesn’t care when her legs start screaming in protest, doesn’t care when her lungs struggle to keep fresh air inside her.

She needs to find her sister.

 _I shouldn’t have yelled at her_ , she thinks, _This is all my fault_.

She doesn’t cry though.  She has more important things to spend her energy on.

*

The sky is beginning to turn orange and yellow.  Sansa doesn’t care.  She keeps on running.

She passes rice paddies and fields and the odd house, but there’s no sign of Arya, not even more dropped berries.

*

When she can’t keep running, she sinks to her knees, gasping for air and wishing there were a stream nearby where she could get some water.

She hears a car coming down the road towards her and she forces herself to stand.  It slows in front of her.  “What are you doing out here all by yourself?” asked the driver.

“I’m looking for my little sister.  She’s run off.  You haven’t seen her, have you?”

“No,” the driver looked surprise and he glanced sideways to look at his wife.  “No, we haven’t seen anyone.”

“She’s four years old,” Sansa pleads, “and she was headed towards the hospital.”

“The hospital?” the woman says, eyes wide, “A four year old couldn’t walk to the hospital.”

“I hope you find her soon,” said the man.

Sansa feels the muscles under her lower lip begin to twitch and she hurries off down the road again.  Behind her, the car kicks into gear again.

*

“Sansa!”  Jon is riding a bike down the road, moving faster than Sansa is.  Sansa can barely walk now, her legs feel like jelly.  He pulls up next to her.  “Any luck?”

Sansa shakes her head. 

“Dang.  I had hoped…They found a sandal in the pond…They’re worried it might be hers.”

She takes off before he finishes his sentence, running hard back towards town.  No, no no no.  She couldn’t have drowned.  No. 

Jon is level with her.  “Get on,” he says.  “Sit on the handlebars.  I’ll bike you over.”

She clambers on and he begins peddling.

“Can you see?” she asks.

“Enough.”

*

It’s not Arya’s sandal.  Nan looks like she could cry with relief when Sansa tells her so.  Arya doesn’t wear pink, and it’s a size too small anyway. 

Nan hugs her and tells her to come back to the house for dinner, but Sansa doesn’t—Sansa can’t.

This has gone on long enough, and she runs back up the hill towards her house.  Her sandals are coming apart so she kicks them off and runs barefoot.

It’s fully dark when she reaches the weirwood in the backyard.  In the night, the leaves look black—a deeper black than the green leaves of the other trees.  She’d never noticed before.

“Please,” she whispers to it, “please, Nymeria.  Help me find her.  Help me bring her home safe.”

The wind rustles the leaves of the tree and then, light behind her.  She whirls around, expecting her father in the car, or the police, or maybe even Nan.

She sees the dragon bus, and Nymeria is inside, sitting lazily.  The sign on its forehead that says “Home” switches to say “Arya” as it kneels in front of Sansa.

She gets in.  She doesn’t think twice.

And they’re flying, soaring over the hills and the fields, high over the roads that have little pinprick lights of cars going here and there, pinpricks that are only slightly larger than the stars overhead.  Sansa runs her fingers through Nymeria’s fur and stares out the window, wondering how the dragon bus knows where Arya is, and knowing that it doesn’t matter because she’ll find her soon.

*

“Arya!”

Arya is sitting on a rock, the berries still the basket in her hands.  Her heart leaps at the call.  “Sansa!” she wails, getting to her feet and looking around.

The dragon bus lands neatly in front of her and Sansa is running out and she kneels down and takes Arya in her arms, and she’s laughing with relief and Arya’s tears get soaked up into Sansa’s shirt.

When she pulls back, she looks at the dragon bus again.  The sign is changing, words are reforming, but Arya doesn’t know that one.  She points to it, and Sansa says, “Oh.”

Arya rolls her eyes.  “What does it say?”

“Hospital.”

*

They see Dad sitting next to Mama on her bed.  Mama is laughing at something he just said, and they know that it’s all going to be all right.  Arya leaves her basket of berries on the windowsill before they get into the bus again and fly back to Nan’s house.

*

“Sansa?  Aren’t you tired?” Dad asks.  Sansa starts and turns to look at him.  “What happened to your legs?” he asks, eyebrows raised.

She looks down.  They’re covered in dirt and dust and bruises she got while running.  She shrugs.  “I played soccer with Jon earlier,” she lies. 

“Well, get to bed soon.  It’s late.”  He tries to sound stern. 

“In a second,” she whispers.  She hears Arya roll over in the bed and begin snoring lightly.  Dad comes over and kisses the top of her head before heading to his own bedroom.

Outside the window, Sansa sees movement in the trees.  She sees big yellow eyes, and what looks like the flash of white teeth.

“Thank you,” she whispers.  Then smiles and crawls into bed next to her sister.

Arya is safe.  Mama will be home next weekend.  And Sansa is happy.


End file.
